Books Category
The latest books and literature reviews, comment, features and interviews, with extracts from famous texts and neglected gems.
The move to shut down Nobokov’s Lolita with violence
IN the New Yorker, Michael Idov writes about the problems of staging Lolita, a play based on Vladimir Nabokov’s book. It’s the 1955 story of a middle-aged professor who falls for a 12-year-old girl. The Sunday Express called Lolita “sheer unrestrained pornography”. It might be.
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Book of the Day: The Life and Loves of Mr Jiveass Nigger
BOOK of the Day: The Life and Loves of Mr Jiveass Nigger, by Cecil Brown:
Posted: 28th, February 2013 | In: Books, Flashback | Comment (1)
William Faulkner’s Post Office regination letter and dream of working in a brothel
IN 1987, the US Postal Service produced a stamp to honour William Faulkner. Before he was a man of letters, Faulkner was delivering letters. Between 1921 to 1924, he worked as the University of Mississippi’s postmaster. He didn’t enjoy it. This is, reportedly, his resignation letter:
October, 1924
As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.
This, sir, is my resignation.
(Signed by Faulkner)
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Posted: 26th, February 2013 | In: Books, Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Lady Mary Curzon: Cressida Bona’s mother appeared in Birds Of Britain
PRINCE Harry’s is dating Cressida BONAS. * (Her name must forever be capitalised.) La Bonas’s mother is Lady Mary Curzon, a siren of the Swinging Sixties with five children by three of her four husbands. She might be the Carol Jackson of high society.
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Posted: 21st, February 2013 | In: Books, Royal Family | Comment
Woman covers body in Twilight tattoos: can’t see the trees for the wooden actors
CATHY Ward, 51, Cathy Ward, has scene and quotes from the Twilight books and films on her skin. In the right light, you can role her around in bed and read her. Her lovers’ are never without literary stimulation. Of her ink of Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner, Ward says:
“I’m still continuing with them. We’ve got plans and designs for my legs next year – the aim is to cover my whole body.”
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Posted: 17th, February 2013 | In: Books, Film, Strange But True | Comment
Study the Bible, with Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis
IT’S Sunday. Time to study the Bible, with Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis.
Greta Christina reviews:
Of course I’ve read Genesis. More than once. It’s been a little while since I’ve read the whole thing all the way through, but it’s not like it’s unfamiliar. But there’s something about seeing the story fleshed out in images to make some of its more striking narrative turns leap out and grab your brain by the root. There’s nothing quite like seeing the two different creation stories enacted on the page to make you go, “Hey! That’s right! Two completely different creation stories!” There’s nothing quite like seeing Lot offer his daughters to be gang-raped to make you recoil in shock and moral horror. There’s nothing quite like seeing the crazed dread and burning determination in Abraham’s eyes as he prepares the sacrifice of his own son to make you feel the enormity of this act. Reading these stories in words conveys the ideas; seeing them in images conveys the visceral impact. It makes it all seem vividly, immediately, humanly real.
Now, that is something of a mixed blessing. Spending a few days with the characters in Genesis isn’t the most relaxing literary vacation you’ll ever take. Richard Dawkins wasn’t kidding when he said, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.” The God character in Genesis is cruel, violent, callous, insecure, power-hungry, paranoid, hot-tempered, morally fickle… I could go on and on. And God’s followers aren’t much better. They lie, they scheme, they cheat one another, they conquer other villages with bloodthirsty imperialist glee, they kill at the drop of a hat. This isn’t Beatrix Potter here. It’s more like Dangerous Liaisons by way of Quentin Tarantino. With tents, sand, and sheep.
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Posted: 10th, February 2013 | In: Books | Comments (5)
Jon Venables: Ralph Bulger’s new book sheds light on James Bulger’s killer
THE murder of James Bulger is still news. Ralph Bulger, father of the two-year-old murdered by twn-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, has written a book. My James by Ralph Bulger and Rosie Dunn centres on the events of February 12, 1993. The parts about he and wife Denise Ferguson’s unbearable pain are horrible, like being invited to look at survivors’ slides from a fatal car crash. The parts about the child’s body and wounds are grim. They offer nothing new. What is interesting is the story of the criminal case, particularly how Jon Venables comes across:
…
‘Is that you on that video, son?’ Ann Thompson demanded. ‘Nah, it’s got nothing to do with me,’ he replied. As if to prove his point, Robert went to a makeshift memorial near the railway in Walton and later took some flowers. When he got home he said to his mother: ‘Why would I take flowers to the baby if I had killed him?’ At another home nearby, Jon Venables told his mother, Susan: ‘If I’d seen them kids hurting the baby, I’d have kicked their heads in.’
…
Jon’s father, meanwhile, asked his son about the blue paint that was splattered on his mustard-coloured coat. He said that his friend Robert Thompson had thrown it at him.
I later learned that on the Wednesday evening an anonymous woman went to Marsh Lane Police Station. She said she was a friend of the Venables family and knew that the son, a boy called Jon, had skipped school with a friend called Robert Thompson on the Friday that James went missing. He had returned home with blue paint on his jacket.
…
Jon was having lunch when his mother held her son in a tight embrace and said: ‘I love you, Jon. I want you to tell the truth, whatever it might be.’ He started to cry, and just blurted out: ‘I did kill him.’ The boy looked across the room at the detectives and said: ‘What about his mum? Will you tell her I’m sorry.’ Jon continued to blame everything on Robert. He said they found James outside the butcher’s shop. He said it was his idea to take him, but it was Robert’s idea to kill him. They took him to the canal, where Robert planned to throw him in. James would not kneel down to look at his reflection in the water as they wanted, so Robert picked him up and threw him on the ground. This was how James had first injured his head. He said that James kept crying: ‘I want my mummy.’
…
‘He wanted him dead, probably,’ he responded. ‘Robert was probably doing it for fun because he was laughing his head off.’ For his part, though, Robert refused to admit any involvement in the attack. ‘He never actually told me the truth in the end – far from it,’ said DS Roberts. ‘He lied from the minute we started to interview him.’ ‘When he was charged, he had no problem with it. I suppose he knew that if he was found guilty he would have a better life than he would outside. I thought to myself, “This boy has caused so much misery and evil.” I didn’t look for the three sixes on the back of his head, but at that moment I thought he was the devil.’
…
It may oversimplify the arguments, but that to my mind makes them evil beyond belief.
You never do hear much of Robert Thompson…
Posted: 3rd, February 2013 | In: Books, Reviews | Comments (21)
Helping the Retarded to Know God
BOOK of the day: Helping the Retarded to Know God. Published 1969 by Contordia.
Add it to the list of terrible book titles.
Posted: 13th, January 2013 | In: Books, Flashback | Comments (2)
Self-help books are only for the educated
EVER buy a self-help book? Laura Vanderkam notes:
[T]he people who buy these books are, like all book buyers, “pretty comfortable,” says John Duff of Penguin. “It’s going to be that middle-class person, reasonably well-educated” and in “very rarefied” company, as “our market for all books is really very limited. Most people stop reading when they leave school.” Those who don’t stop probably have their acts together.
Call it the paradox of self-help. “The type of person who values self-control and self-improvement is the type of person who would seek more of it in a self-help book,”Whelan says. “So it’s not the unemployed crazy lady sitting on the couch eating potato chips who reads self-help. It’s the educated, affluent, probably fairly successful person who wants to better themselves.”
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Self-help book of the day: How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday
BOOK of the day is for those of viewing the gaping year ahead with apathy and misery. It’s Hiroyuki Nishigaki’s How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?
Intro:
I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make #### three times in succession without drawing out.In addition, he also can have burned a strong beautiful fire within his abdomen. It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body, release his immaterial fiber or third attention which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration.If you don’t know concentration which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like a hell.
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Posted: 1st, January 2013 | In: Books | Comment (1)
1941: Home Meat Curing Made Easy (with Pig FISTING)
IN Home Meat Curing Made Easy, home butchers back in 1941 could learn how to cut up a pig, a lamb or any family member and rub it into tasty glory. It was a book also enjoyed by mass murderers:
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Posted: 30th, December 2012 | In: Books, Flashback | Comment
April Bloomfield’s A Girl and Her Pig: Recipes and Stories – the hilarious reviews
WHAT are the critics saying about British-born, New York-based chef April Bloomfield’s A Girl and Her Pig: Recipes and Stories? If you like eating pigs, it promises to be cracking read. Her intro even offers the chance to chortle: “When I was girl, I wanted to be a policewoman…”
She turned to another kind of piggery for a career. On Amazon, though, many are outraged and upset. The reviews are memorable.
Pity the piglets:
This is the most disgusting cover and should be taken out from any book display… The cover of this book is absolutely disgusting, revolting and insensitive… I don’t think I can hold it in my hand without cringing, and I cannot imagine the “book” being displayed where young children are present.
I read no more:
This is the most disgusting cover and should be taken out from any book display.The killing of animal for food is a fact of life but doesnt need to be shown as a trophee. In fact as soon as it appear on Amazon, it simply put me off culinary book altogether. I am a regular customer of cook books but i have to say that this put me off completely to buy anything for a long time – Nash
I saw this book in a bookstore and felt bad for the poor pig, what angered me next was a woman who dragged her young daughter over to see it and they both laughed. What the hell is wrong with people when they find dead animals amusing? I really wanted to slap both of them! It’s a very sad world we live in 🙁 – Gail Witham
Meanwhile…in Russia:
What a tasteless, insensitive, repulsive cover. Dead baby animal on display. Don’t bother to argue that is what meat is. Graveyards are full of corpses. I don’t need to see photos of them displayed on the cemetary walls – CBC
I’m not pigist but…:
I would lose my appetite everytime I picked up this cookbook to prepare anything from it.
I’m not a chef. I’m an ordinary person who likes to cook and entertain. I do handle larger cuts of meat and poultry that I cut up myself. I’ve cleaned freshly caught fish…
This is America, the land of free speech and the right to express an opinion… I am not willing to spend my money on a product that carelessly displays a dead animal for commercial appeal – Cathy
Do judge a book by its cover:
Poor pig that got murdered. I find the cover distasteful. Dont judge a book by it’s covers? In this case, I have! – Don Grego
The Malaysian sequel- A Girl and her Puppy:
It saddens me to see a book so casually flaunting a killed pig. Actually, this is only a piglet.. several weeks old. Would this be so acceptable had it been a calf (“veal”), or better yet a puppy? – L. Jorgensen
DIE!
SHAME ON APRIL BLOOMFIELD FOR HOLDING A TORTURED AND KILLED INNOCENT PIG ACROSS HER SHOULDERS LIKE A PRIZE! A GIRL AND HER PIG? THE TITLE SOUNDS AS IF SHE HAS KILLED HER OWN BELOVED PET TO SATISFY HER SALIVARY GLANDS! DISGUSTING! I HOPE THIS COVER TURNS OFF MANY POTENTIAL BUYERS! SHE DESERVES THE CHOLESTEROL AND ALL THE COMPLICATIONS IT BRINGS! – LUCKY TO LIVE IN LA (LA,CA)
Who else if off to buy one, then..?
Posted: 29th, December 2012 | In: Books | Comment (1)
Eye of Sauron made of Stacked Tolkien Books
ONE day all bookshops will sell books stacked into a theme. This stack features books by Tolkein:
Spotter:22 Words
Julie Burchill: Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philosemite
A WHILE back I (along with others) received an email from the divine goddess Julie Burchill. She was seeking my financial support for a book she wants to publish called Unchosen: The Memoirs of a Philosemite – about her adoration of the Jewish race. She had signed up to a crowd-funding publishing outfit called Unbound – if an author can find enough loot via backers (ie interested readers with cash) to sponsor their book, then they, too, will find themselves between covers.
Posted: 22nd, November 2012 | In: Books | Comments (7)
Inappropriate bar code: the Paediatric Handbook
INAPPROPRIATE bar code placement of the day: the Paediatric Handbook:
Stieg Larsson’s letter to Eva Gabrielsson
STIEG Larsson wrote a letter to his partner, Eva Gabrielsson. On November 9th of 2004, Stieg Larsson died. He was 50. He left behind a letter. The envelope was titled: “To be opened only after my death”.
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Posted: 12th, October 2012 | In: Books, Celebrities | Comments (2)
Jimmy Savile book of the day: Other People’s Children – A Handbook for Child Minders
JIMMY Savile book of the day: Other People’s Children – a Handbook for Child Minders”… Previously: Love Is An Uphill Thing and Benjamin Rabbit and the Stranger Danger…
Spotter: Dangerous Minds
Posted: 10th, October 2012 | In: Books, Celebrities | Comments (5)
Jimmy Savile Book of the day: ‘Love Is An Uphill Thing’
JIMMY Savile book of the day: “The rags-to-riches autobiography of JIMMY SAVILE OBE – LOVE IS AN UPHILL THING.”
Previously in Jimmy Savile books.
Posted: 9th, October 2012 | In: Books, Celebrities | Comment (1)
Jimmy Savile’s ‘Benjamin Rabbit and the Stranger Danger – What a child needs to know about strangers’
BECAUSE we are reviewing Jimmy Savile’s life’s work in light of allegations of him attacking young girls, we cast an eye over the introduction he wrote for Irene Keller’s book Benjamin Rabbit and the Stranger Danger – What a child needs to know about strangers.
It’s the familiar faces you need to worry about…
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Posted: 2nd, October 2012 | In: Books, Celebrities | Comment
Funny names of real authors
FUNNY names of real authors. (The author of the family planning book is ANITA HARDON)…
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Rod Hull’s Emu On His Own might be the saddest book ever
IS Rod Hull’s Emu on his Own the world’s saddest book?
Spotter: @scaryduck
Joseph Anton: life for Salman Rushdie under the fatwa
ONE good thing about that 1989 fatwa – it gave Salman Rushdie something to write about, other than naughty but nice cream slices and fallen angels. To plug his new book, Joseph Anton, Rushdie talks about life under a death sentence:
He unlocked the front door, went outside, got into the car, and was driven away. Although he did not know it then — so the moment of leaving his home did not feel unusually freighted with meaning — he would not return to that house, at 41 St. Peter’s Street, which had been his home for half a decade, until three years later, by which time it would no longer be his.
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